


OZYMANDIAS

by illinois_e



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: 20k of whatever i see fit, Abusive Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Child Abuse, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M, Masochism, Mentions of Sex, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Sadism, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, his fic is just me picking up the blank page that, how did i forget that!!!, its riko's past and filling it with whatever i see fit, lots of selfs, more christian references than i would like to use in a work, one-sided kevin day/riko moriyama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:26:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23046238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illinois_e/pseuds/illinois_e
Summary: when did you first notice the ugly, dark thing festering inside your bones?
Relationships: Kevin Day/Riko Moriyama (unrequited)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 47





	OZYMANDIAS

**Author's Note:**

> before you ask me if i did really write a 20k character study about riko moriyama, yes i did. and no i don't know why.
> 
> first off, i wanted to thank all the writers that keep feeding me with riko content. this wouldn't be possible without y'all. love u.
> 
> second: i'm well aware i most likely forgot a tag (or two or three) so please point it in the comments if you think theres anything which i need to add to the additional tags.
> 
> third: this work has references ranging to margaret atwood, florence + the machine, sufjan stevens, richard siken, haruki murakami, hozier, anne carson and tame impala. a gift to anyone who finds them all.

to break is to be sanctified,

to make in the body a safe house

where all your monsters get to be raucous.

— marty mcconnell

when you’re seven, you fall down a tree.

no one had remembered to cut it down after it died some months ago. so it stood, its branches gnarled and ugly, static lifeless, in the backyard of your uncle’s house— the house you came when people who your uncle didn’t want to find out about your living arrangements visited the nest, the house you wondered why you couldn’t live in all the time, five seconds before you noticed the lack of an exy court. it takes you two tries to climb it, but in the third one you manage to sit on one of the lowest branches, your little, childish feet dangling in the air.

there’s so many things you can see, higher up, a small boy that has suddenly become taller than everyone else around him. there are children in the merry-go-round, some blocks away, spinning spinning and _spinning_ , just like you head does when your uncle throws you against the wall; spinning spinning _spinning_. the way they’re laughing leaves it crystal clear there’s no pain anywhere they can see, the sound twinkling in the air, little star—up above the world so bright like a diamond in the sky.

you want to go there. you want to sit with these wild, unknown kids that seem to live in another plane of existence, you want to _spin_. and _laugh_. good god, you want to laugh. instinctively you bring your bony fingers to your lips, touch the raised flesh were your uncle slapped you the day before. you don't remember what your laughter sounds like.

you don't hear the crack. our maybe you do (it's hard to remember the little details, the ins and outs, the small figures moving in you peripheral vision), but it was already too late. one second you're sitting, and you're yearning, and in the next— nothing. nothing above or under you, nothing holding you together, nothing preventing the little mismatched pieces that make you _you_ from fleeing around in terror. god knows you'd flee from yourself, if you could. 

god knows a lot of things, and yet you don't see him doing pretty much anything.

but anyway, to the big scheme of things: you fall. feels like a whole eternity, falling. like you're in space floating forever to nowhere at all. laika the dog. you wonder if she knew her fate when they put her in that capsule. probably not—she was just a dog after all. you're just a child, and not even a good one.

when you reach the ground, there's a _crack_ you hear above the blood thrumming in your ears, above the laughter (the children keep spinning, unknowing, unknowable, like a fairy tale or an horror story). you cannot force yourself to move with the fear that you won't be able to.

little bird breaks a wing; crippled, pitiful thing, fallen on the soil, amidst the tall leaves of grass. little bird lays there and wait for the ants to pick his flesh until there's nothing but the white of his hollowed bones to tell the history of what he once was, of everything he'd ever wanted to be.

the thing is: you don’t even feel pain at first — it’s called adrenaline, but you don’t know that yet — which makes you completely sure that you’ve broken your spine in half. the conclusion reaches you with such a degree of certainty that you forget to breathe — twenty seconds worth a lifetime, statuesque still, black bird chained down — until your chest starts burning.

(what use does your uncle have for a crippled boy, you think, suspended in time, the place where nothing happens. no roundabout way to play exy without moving your legs, and if you can't play exy— you might as well be dead, for him. for yourself.)

 _please,_ you think, _don't let it be broken._ wish i may, wish i might. even if the star was real, it wouldn't hear you anyway. it wouldn't mind about you. it wouldn't, as nathan says, when he comes to the nest and makes you hold the knives, give a single fuck. your knowledge only makes everything ten times worse. please please please. 

(you ask it anyway, for what will become of you otherwise, little boy with his soul strewn across the ground?)

it takes a long time until you start to feel your ankle throbbing in pain—and god, you could cry (you do cry) because if it hurts it means you can feel it and if you can feel it that means it's all fine, it's alright, you uncle won't have to take you back to the house you were thrown out, to the father that gave you away; the two of them throwing you about like a hot potato. who gets to take care of this poor excuse for a person?

you wait for your uncle to come and see what all the racket is about, but he doesn’t. understandable, you think—understandable is a nice word you learned on your latest tutoring session and you think it applies in many such aspects of your life. your uncle grinds you down to the bone. understandable: you need correction; you need the weight of a cane in the space between your shoulder blades until you cease to be this pathetic excuse of a child. your father left you to the subterranean darkness of the nest and never once looked back. understandable: you were never wanted, and anyway, you should be glad you’re not lying down inside the same coffin your mother is. you should be glad he looked at you, so quiet after your birth he suspected you were dead — and what a relief it would be — and saw something in your face worth keeping. not close to him, but alive, at least, somewhere.

when you finally find the strength to get on your foot — only the left one, because the right can’t even touch the ground without a scream begging to rip your throat in half — and start the slow way back to the house, the children have stopped laughing. you, however, keep spinning, head dizzy with pain and hunger and fear. or maybe it’s just the movement of earth. rotation, translation. you look up to the sky, but you can’t see any star yet. it’s a pity—kayleigh always takes you and kevin to see the stars at night, teaches you the constellations so that they can illuminate your sleep. you try to think of her, but your mind is too fuzzy for you to concentrate on anything that isn’t reaching the house while hopping on your good foot, one arm against the wall to avoid another fall. 

you're a small bird kept in a perch too high up the sky; the prospect of falling down is terrifying. the certainty of it is the only thing that keeps you moving.

(it takes your uncle one look at the purple, swollen mess that has become of your ankle for him to grab you by the arm and send you spiraling on the floor. spiraling. spinning. falling. when the doctor asks how did you hurt yourself that much, you say _i fell down a tree._

half truth doesn't mean half lie. by then, you're already well used to both)

* * *

there is a white lollipop at your bedside table.

it tastes like what you imagine clouds would taste like, before the downpour. heavy and loaded under your tongue. like a gun, but not quite.

you don't remember much of the hospital, only that it hurt like hell when the doctor had to put your shoulder back in place — you still don't understand why you had to be awake for that —, but fortunately they put you to sleep before starting on your ankle. when you came back to your senses, you were back at your room, in the nest, and your new caretaker, anya — they're always changing, so you won't get attached to them — gave you the popsicle. you were suspicious, at first; your uncle never lets you eat sweets, but she smiled and told it was okay. tetsuji had provided it himself.

you're well on your third one by now. it's not like there's a problem, right? every time you finish one, there's another in its place, like magic. an infinite supply of lollipops. sometimes you think you're still in the hospital, medicated, dreaming.

they're sweet, and better yet, they make the pain stop, though you don't quite know how. you'd never have thought of sugar as an analgesic. 

(if so, you would have raided the kitchen every time your uncle caned your back, but then, most of these times you can't even walk around your room, so maybe you would just suffer through it. it does seem easier, in the end.)

the only downside is that they make you quite dizzy—your eyelids getting heavy soon after the first licks, your whole body relaxing until you can barely hold the stick to your mouth anymore. you're feeling like that in the only time your uncle enters the room to see you, you-don't-know-how-many days after the fall. you want to say something, like _look, i'm getting better!_ or _i'm sure i'll be able to play again soon,_ but your tongue is stuck inside your mouth, weighing half a ton, so you stay silent.

your uncle stays silent too. he looks at you as if he's pondering if he shouldn't strangle you with a pillow. as if he's doing all the calculations in his head that will let him know if you're still worthy, after breaking your ankle. if you still have any chance to be a great — the best, _ever_ — exy player. 

after a minute, he simply walks out, without a word. you carefully put the lollipop over its wrapping paper — white, again — and close your eyes, waiting for sleep to carry you somewhere; anywhere. 

(you sleep and wake and sleep again at least three times before someone remembers to tell you kayleigh day is dead. car accident, they said, even though you're too out of it to properly remember what a car is supposed to look like. you do know they're not supposed to hit each other, but hey. who knows?

the single tear that mars your cheek is as alien in your face as the downturned corned of anya’s mouth. she leaves you without saying anything else. she leaves you in a world without kayleigh day on it, which is a train of thought you're not in condition to process. so, instead of focusing on the non-figurative use of the word death, you try to remember kayleigh laughter whenever she managed to make your uncle allow you a sleepover on their house, and tentatively you clasp your hands together, arranging your fingers as she taught. _see?_ she would say, positioning her hand between the white wall and the candlelight, so that a shadow apparead against the concrete. _an elephant!_

but there's no elephant when you do it. no shadow. no laughter. just your small, disobedient hands. of course—there's no light. there's no one. and some things, you ponder, are unattainable to you plainly because they're not meant to be done alone.)

* * *

you’re still halfway out of it the first time kevin is allowed into your room.

the stream of lollipops that once flowed freely is now almost dry. you’ve been taken to savoring every lick, and carefully leaving them over their white wrapping paper instead of permanently above your tongue, so as to make them last longer. sometimes anya will refuse to give you a new one when yours end, and you have to force a tear or two to fall down before she relents. 

any other day, you would be ashamed. for now, it doesn’t seem that bad.

it’s been twenty days since you got out of the hospital, and your ankle is healing nicely, or so the doctor says. soon enough, you should be able to stand up on your feet again, and then walk. and then play. 

your heart still runs fast whenever you remember how you almost slipped, how you almost asked _isn't there any chance that i'll be able to walk but not to play?_

there's a fair good chance that you wouldn't be as half as heartbroken as you should if he said you couldn't walk again. when you fell, the only thing you could focus on was the fear of becoming useless. but you've been useless for twenty days and it isn't quite as bad as you've thought it would be. you could get used to it. and maybe your uncle could, too, so when the doctor finally broke the news (did everything we could, permanent damage, movement impairment, wheelchair) he wouldn't sprinkle rat poison on your juice.

and if you look bad, with your tangled hair and wrinkled pajamas and your foot in a plaster, propped on two pillows, kevin looks like he fell from some two trees, or maybe all of them, over and over until he couldn't find any more bones to break. the warm, light-brown color of his skin appears ashen gray even against the duochrome of your room. his green eyes are watery; red-rimmed as someone who had just been crying. you could bet your ankle he was. kevin cried a lot—you'd always thought that if you cried half as much your uncle would have sewn your mouth shut somehow. but then kayleigh would always come and pick kevin on her lap when he cried, so maybe that was a thing all boys that had their moms did: cry. only kevin didn't have his mother anymore. 

he sits on the edge of the mattress, this tall, raucous boy suddenly dead quiet. maybe he's eating the same lollipops as you, you think, while you refrain yourself from giving yours a lick while he's with you. you don't know why, but you don't want kevin to see it. 

he looks down, wringing his hands over his lap. you should say something, but you don't have idea what to say to him. you have gotten used to healing wishes from the players your uncle's team, but between your broken ankle and kevin's dead mother there's no doubt what is worse. no matter that you too have a dead mother.

“i'm gonna live here now,” kevin says, beating you to it. whenever your uncle suggested in a conversation that kayleigh should leave kevin to grow up in the nest while she travelled, kevin’s eyes would shine with visions of his future. now they're just dull and glassy. you too would trade a hundred nests for kayleigh, if you could. “i mean, tetsuji is my godfather, and now that mom— well. your uncle said that i'm gonna sleep here with you, and that we can play exy as soon as you get better.”

“that’s nice,” you say, even though you don’t think that’s nice at all. you don’t want kevin to see you crawling out of your uncle’s office covered in blood. “we can be together all the time.”

kayleigh knew about you uncle. and you. and the fact that he beats you as if he wants to take out his anger of the world on the skin of your back. last month, she took both you and kevin to the pool on the hotel she was staying; and whereas before you always said you were too scared of drowning to enter the water, it was so hot that you couldn’t resist a quick dip—so you went in, shirt and everything, and stayed there until the sun came down. and then, when you went into the bathroom to take a shower, kayleigh followed you inside and kindly asked you to take your shirt off. and then you cried. and then she cried too, and hugged you, not minding the chlorinated water and the snot and the tears you were staining her dress with, and promised you she was going to talk with your uncle, and that it was all going to be alright. that she was going to make it alright.

you clung to her words like a drowning man to a life jacket. and a month later she was dead. you’re scared of doing the connection, but you do it anyway. just to add another entry to the list of disgraces you’ve brought.

“that’s just what he said: that we gotta stay together all day now. that we’re going to be a pair. but don’t worry, he said he will tell you everything, after you get better. that your head is still a little bad, from the fall, so you’re forgetting things and he doesn’t like to repeat himself.” _oh no, he doesn’t alright_ , you think. kevin will soon learn that the things your uncle dislikes outnumber the things he likes in the most astounding disproportion. “is it that bad? your head, i mean.”

you shake your head, even though you think it’s _a little bad_ since your uncle slammed it against the radiator when you were five and refused to eat your greens. but kevin doesn’t know that—from now on, however, he will know every single wretched thing that’ll happen to you under this roof. wonderful, truly. “it’s alright.”

kevin visibly perks up at that. “good! because i brought a book— your uncle said i couldn’t bring many things because there’s not much space, but i said this book was my favorite and he let me keep it. i had to throw the rest in the trash, though.” and then, as quickly as that, his face falls again. you try to remember all the books and the toys and the videogames kevin had, but it’s too much for a child whose only toys are an exy racket and a police car with flaring lights that has to stay hidden.

“read it for me,” you say, to take his mind off the past. the more he keeps dwelling on it the harder will it be for him to get in line. and he needs to, because your uncle’s patience wears thin _fast,_ and kevin will want to avoid the straight lines of his cane as the plague, if he knows what’s better for him. for you both.

you pat the space besides you and he lies down, your first real dose of human warmth in what? you can’t remember. the book on his hands is an old, battered copy of _peter pan_ that was kayleigh’s before it was his, and when he starts reading that first sentence you know from head, it’s her voice you hear coming out of his lips, the melodic tune of a storyteller’s spectacle. her last lullaby to you. so you put her to rest in a bed with all other childish hopes.

you do not have the luxury of not growing up.

(and it is funny the way you long for it, dream about it, live for it, as someone who willingly puts himself into the path of disaster. from seven to ten to twenty — you’ll leave the nest somewhere by twenty-five, you guess; most of the ravens you know go away by this time — to thirty. at thirty-five you should already be dead, which is a thought that will get more and more pleasing to you as you reach twelve.

but then, as human beings, aren’t we always wishing for the things that will destroy us?)

* * *

you underestimate kevin.

(which is something you will do countless times, unknowing of how it will lead you to the spiraling path of your downfall. but now is not the time for that.)

there is a place deep inside him where your uncle’s cane cannot reach, no matter how many times it strikes his back, his arms, his legs. but then, your uncle always said there’s something missing in you, something that makes you worthless and hateful and twisted. you guess that must be it— this unnamed thing you’ve been searching for, all along.

you’re afraid of naming it, because the definition would make it real, would make it known, and then you would have to search for it, to take it for yourself, because isn’t this what you’re supposed to do? isn’t this what your uncle (your _master_ ) meant when he ordered you to keep kevin’s leash tight?

the price of disobedience is one you’re willing to pay, if it keeps kevin going on, day after day, if it helps him step onto that court with his calloused hands and his heart between his teeth, until the older ravens start respecting him, until they finally accept him into the nest within the nest.

because somewhere, you know, kayleigh day is sitting upon a cotton white cloud, or perched on a star, or just looking down at you from a vast expanse of the unknown, and she wants you to keep her son safe as she couldn't keep you. so you vow to yourself you're gonna do it; for her, but also because kevin and his incessant need to dump collections of historical facts upon you by midnight may be the single thing that prevented you from purposefully breaking your other ankle to get one more month of respite.

(you always stop at the last minute: for if this is finally the moment when you manage to permanently damage your body enough to become useless inside a court, then what's gonna happen to you?)

so be it. if indiscipline translates itself into the now permanent visage of your arms covered in lashes, it’s not like you were not already used to it. your uncle is only giving them a reason now, a purpose. and where before you were punished for your mere existence, for the nuisance that you caused when, unwilling and unwanted, you were spat into this world of living things, now you’re being punished for daring to take everything hurtful thrown at you and stitch it backwards in some way that will break your body, but will not break your spirit.

and these are words that sound like medicine to a twelve year old boy who never knew nothing besides misery and anguish, so you cradle them to your chest like you hope — like you adamantly believe, with everything you have, because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself, if this isn’t true — your mother has once cradled you.

(you don’t tell kevin anything. you don’t make promises—the older boys always promised that they would talk with your uncle, that they would make him stop hitting you; kayleigh promised, too, and now she’s dead, and her promise lingers, unfinished.

but you do his japanese homework for him, because his handwritten is something out of an horror book, and you’ve taken to slipping out of the nest by a hole in the wired fence, because the thing kevin misses most after his mother is ice cream; so you both make the ten minutes walk to the closest parlor, where he asks for pineapple and coconut while you settle for plain chocolate — it’s just the funniest thing, chocolate — all the while keeping a careful eye on your wristwatch, mindful not to pay such a close attention to his stories that you lose track of time. kevin would’ve made an wonderful sheherazade, anywhere else besides the place he’ll stay for the rest of his life.

you know it’s not much. but it’s the best you can do.

you underestimate kevin. and you overestimate yourself.)

* * *

“where did you used to live, before you came here?”

the two of you are lying down on the cool wooden floor of the court, after having cleaned the mess of today's practice. you missed the last shot and the disgusted gleam in your uncle's eyes told you everything without him needing to say an actual word.

there's bound to be more punishment later. that's why you're still there, even if the hardwood floor is now clean and shining. if this was before, when you were still a boy both alone and lonely inside your birdcage, you would've gone down the stairs and just be done with it. the worst part is the waiting. and by now your back has been hit so many times it's almost numb—you don't even feel pain anymore; only shame.

“i’ve always lived here,” you answer. it’s true. ever since you remember, you’ve lived here, with evermore court looming above your head, the weight of it upon your small shoulders. it’s also not true—you have read in a letter hidden inside your uncle’s old dictionary that, some months before you were supposed to be born, your mother managed to convince your father to let her take a trip to japan claiming to be awfully homesick. but when the plane that was supposed to bring her back landed, there was no sign of her, anywhere.

(but he got her, a year and a half later, with you in her arms. you father doesn’t like to leave things unfinished. and finished things, to him, are likely to end with a bullet lodged into someone’s head. even if the head is his wife’s.)

you like to tell yourself you can remember her: the smell of her hair (jasmine), the touch of her hands (careful but also firm, as if she’s being extra sure you’re with her), the cadence of her voice as she sings you to sleep (sometimes, you can even make the words in your dreams). the rational part of your brain tells you, time and time again, that can’t be true. the part of your heart that hasn’t started its slow turn to stone doesn’t care. because it has to believe that, somewhere, even if it was for the slightest amount of time, you were wanted. that you were, long ago, more than this hollow shell of a child; a mold with no filling. incomplete, because no one cared enough to finish the job.

“that can’t be true,” kevin retorts; thirteen years old and already talking as if he knows all there is to know, in the world. “you couldn’t have lived here all the time. i mean, you got to have a _home_.”

“this is my home.” you open your arms as wide as you can, trying to encompass all of castle evermore. the only home you’ve ever known. the only home you ever would.

at your side, kevin scoffs. “this is a _stadium_ , riko. it can’t be anyone’s home.”

 _but,_ you want to say, _if this can’t be a home, then i have never had one._

“well, then,” you say, quickly trying to divert the subject before your mind fully processes that, besides not having a real family, you don’t even have a real home. “tell me, where your home is? ‘cause it seems to me like it’s here, too. just like mine.”

kevin scratches his chin like the old man he is, thinks for a minute before settling. “ah, i know! it's the house in alabama. the one where my mother grew in, when her parents moved from ireland.” you try to imagine what grandparents are supposed to look like. “whenever she didn't have anything on her agenda, we would go there and spend maybe a month or two. and she would play with me in the garden, and then i would go out and play with the other children.”

“it seems nice,” you say, even though your limited experience of playing with other children is resumed to the times where kayleigh took both of you out. you can’t possibly imagine being able to play whatever you wished, everywhere you wished, with whomever you wished, all the time. it’s too much freedom—it leaves you wheezing, like someone pulled the rug beneath your feet and left you there, falling in slow motion.

kevin sighs. sometimes you forget how this all must feel like, to him. a boy who had everything: friends, a house, a mother. and how quickly — and how unfairly — he became just like you. hollow. you wonder what he’ll use to fill up the spaces between his ribs; if it’s going to be rage and hate, as you’re learning to, or if he’ll settle for something else. something better.

(you always knew kevin was better than you, in every aspect. only a fool could not see it. and you may be wretched and hopeless and, all in all, just a waste of space, but you are no fool.)

“i miss it.” he looks at the sky, and you know that he's thinking about the constellations kayleigh taught you about. you always feel closer to her under the night sky. “i miss her.”

you refrain the wish to say _i miss her too,_ because for how strong it is in you, this longing for her, you know that kevin feels it much worse. he was her son, after all, while you were just the boy she pitied. so you settle for “she said she was going to make it alright, for me.”

“she told me she wanted you to come live with us,” kevin says, his hand reaching for yours; fingers brushing against each other as a reminder of the materiality of you two. the realness. “in that house in alabama.”

“are you serious?”

kevin nods, without looking at your face. it’s just too much for you, all at once. you’d prefer not ever knowing it—ignorance is truly a blessing, most of the time. but now you know it, and there’s no coming back, no erasing that from your memory. you know about kayleigh, and the house in alabama, and about every single thing you could have, but don’t. every single thing that was supposed to go right in your life, for the first time ever, but didn’t.

“can you imagine it, though, if she hadn't died that day? it would be amazing. we could go to school together in the morning, and then we would eat lunch together and then practice together and go home together and then… play videogames? or watch a movie. or read! anything. we could do anything.”

you nod, because what else you can say to that? anything, kevin says, and never before a word seemed so all encompassing, a black hole into which every desire of yours fell into. _anything._

you nod, and you don't look at kevin, because if you do the dam might break off, and it has been so long since the last time you cried you have no idea if you could stop at wish or if the tears would simply flow until you dehydrated body hit the ground. you've held back tears in face of your uncle and his cane and his indifference; you're not letting them fall over a promise made impossible.

“but you know what? we're still gonna do it, when we leave here.” and he looks at you, this boy, with his dark skin and his plump lips turned into a smile, his eyes blind to the rot that is blossoming under your skin. “someday, we're gonna be the best exy players ever, and then we'll leave this place, and we will do everything we've ever wanted to. you'll see, riko. we'll be court, someday, and no one is gonna order us about. it'll be just me and you, and everything.”

yes, _yes._ he's right. he's got to be right or else it won't make any sense, all this. you have to know you're enduring all this for something; you have to know it'll get better sometime, that it'll stop. because if it goes on and on forever you might as well kill yourself right here and be done with it. “we're gonna make a perfect court. and then we'll be free.”

“free,” you repeat, after him, hoping that somehow it’ll make this dream come true. you think that, maybe — hopefully, with a lot of luck, who knows what fate might bring — it can be.

(freedom, you know, is an abstract concept. you can’t touch freedom—you can’t just inhale and fill your lungs with the smell of it. there are times, however, that you try. times that you think you might just grasp it, and then you stand on your tiptoes, in silence, waiting for the best moment to take the jump. but it always flees, and you’ll always be left cursing the part of you that let it go—from your small height to your lack of attention to cowardice to disgracefulness. a lot of flaws, for a child. especially one your size.

so being free is not something you can feel, not rationally, not in any way that’s tangible, physical, real. but the contrary doesn’t apply. with every breath that you take your lungs are filled with the stale air of underground, a constant reminder of your state of veiled captivity. every time you spread your arms, you can touch the walls on either side, almost as if they’re closing upon you, and as you get bigger you have no other option that to keep walking to the impending doom which is being crushed by the weight of them. a whole stadium falling upon the bruised and scarred mess of your back.

it is funny to talk of freedom when you know you’re not getting out of the nest alive.) 

* * *

the paint that once made your iron cage look like gold is chipping.

you’re fifteen. there’s a room, in the east tower of castle evermore, that you’ve never set foot into. every other week, as you and kevin sit on the first row of chairs, made to diligently watch every raven’s game and understand how your uncle's teachings come to life, your father is up there, watching you.

well, not _you_. you know that. technically. your father is there because it's a good cover up for conversations that don't have place where they can be heard by the wrong people; and, if he ever deems himself bored enough to turn his eyes to the stadium brimming with life under his feet — which you doubt he would — he would look at the game taking place, and not at you.

and you know all this. you’re not stupid (even though you repeat this to yourself more times than any sane person should). if you father had ever wanted anything to do with you, he would’ve reached out—answered the dozens of cards you slipped inside that same room east tower by the door crack; addressed the single letter you’ve managed to send to his office, in new york (you couldn’t find the address of his house anywhere); sent even the most meaningless gift for any of your fifteen birthdays, all come and gone without a word, or a touch, or any sign to tell your father had any notion that you are his son, and that you are alive. 

and the (pitiful) thing here is: you would settle for little. so little. a call, thrice a year. a birthday card. a text saying hey, _how's it going? we're doing just fine here._ but there's nothing. not a single message, morse code, sos written in sand. the pitiful thing is: you would settle for a crumb, but even that is beyond your reach.

(you ask your uncle, once. it was that time you broke your ankle; there is a raven’s game going on, upstairs, and you think that (maybe) when it ends, your father will come down and check how you were. you already have the whole conversation rehearsed in your mind: he will sit by your side on the mattress, ask how you are feeling, if your leg is still hurting. you will smile and say it’s all okay now, that it doesn’t even hurt that much when you fell, anyway. and then he will say _of course it doesn’t. i know you’re a strong boy, just as i was, at your age._ and you will smile even more, because this is a dream coming true. and then your father will smile too, and he will say that uncle tetsuji shouldn’t have left you alone that day, that he isn’t taking good care of you, and maybe it’s time for you to live with your father and your brother now, in new york, and to leave the nest and never look back.

and then you start crying—not in your daydream (because in your daydreams you’re a big boy, and you never cry, or get hits, or falls from trees), but in real life, because that was the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to you. and it didn’t even happen yet. it’s all in your mind, but the certainty of what’s going to happen makes you more happy than you’ve ever been since someone told you what happiness is supposed to feel.

it’s only later, when the nest is once again a chamber of silence, and you’re sure that everyone that came to watch the game is gone, your father included, that you call your uncle as you hear his footsteps in the hallway.

he doesn’t say anything. just opens the door and stands there, his back straight as a ruler, as if he’s still giving orders to the players even in their sleep. you have never seen your uncle relaxed, in all these years.

“why hasn’t my father come to see me?” you ask, your childish voice rough with lack of use, and you hate yourself, that moment, for sounding so weak. “i thought he would, after the game.”

“and why would he?” tetsuji doesn’t move, which means that you have to crane your neck to look at him, in a clearly uncomfortable position which he doesn’t seem to mind.

“because i’m hurt,” you say, and in your mind it is so obvious. good fathers take care of their children when they get hurt. you father has to take care of you, because you’re hurt. because you need him. “because i’m his son.”

your uncle’s eyes bore into you as if he wishes he could make you disappear with a glance. “unfortunately.” you want to ask why, but you know you’re going to get hit if you interrupt him, broken ankle or not. “but that doesn’t mean you deserve a second of his time.”

your brain kind of refuses to properly process that. it doesn’t make sense—he is your father. you are his son. there has to be something, somewhere, in your blood, in your bones, that makes it so that you miss him and he misses you. that makes it so that he wants you as much as you want him. because if he doesn’t — if he never did — then why did he made you in the first place?

 _that doesn’t mean you deserve a second of his time_ sounds, to you, awfully like _that doesn’t mean you deserve his love._ and you can’t bear that. and if your brain does all the right connections and if you finally understand what that means, you’ll die. you know it.

“but—” you try to say, but tetsuji keeps talking, like he didn’t hear you, like you’re not there.

“haven’t you noticed yet, how abject you are? how… distasteful, to the eyes, to look at your face?” he finally moves, coming to stay right next to you, one knee propped onto the mattress. his hands frame your cheeks in the closest thing to a caress. it’s the first time he touches you that does not cause you pain. “god knows i hate it, but i don’t have much of a choice. but your father? he does. and he couldn’t stand to live somewhere with this… this stink, this foulness of your existence. do you understand?”

you nod. you don’t understand quite everything, but what you do is enough. the words write themselves inside your skull, around your neck, in the back of your eyelids, so that everytime you close your eyes you can remember. abject. distasteful. foul.

you nod, because if you don’t, you might as well start crying.

“good.” tetsuji gives you another one of his long, hard looks; the ones that make you feel like a lab rat, too stupid to know to which direction the scientist wants you run off. “if you ask about your father again, i’ll rip your tongue out.”

“yes, sir.”

“yes, _master._ ”

“yes, master.” you say. and you don’t ask about your father anymore.)

kevin says you’re wasting your time. that you should focus on exy until you forget all about your father, and you’re overcome with a sudden urge to hit him, right in his treacherous mouth, even though you know he’s right. in a sense. you are wasting your time. you’re a dog abandoned at the closest door, and the hands that feeds you hurts you so much that you want to go back to the hand that cast you out, which also hurts you, but in its own special ways.

you’re fifteen, and right now, in japan, a boy born in the same day as you is standing in front of his class, his eyes shining as he reveals his hopes in the future. you think about it—standing in front of kevin and your tutor, and telling them you spend nights longing for the day your brain will simply get tired of all this madness and cease to function. how sweet it is, the upcoming taste of death. how light in your tongue.

(she would be terrified, but kevin would most like sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose as if he couldn’t stand that subject again. he doesn’t think you can do it—killing yourself. and you can’t, right now. but someday you will.)

you’re fifteen, and you wonder if you father might finally start to care if you walk to the east tower and blow your brains off in front of him.

“riko, come on. the game’s over.” you look at your side and see kevin already standing up, one arm stretched to help you up. you take it, because you can’t remember the last time you ate and your legs feel like jelly, and everyone knows you and kevin are attached by the hip, so it’s not like they’ll notice. “everything okay? you look… strange.”

which is a good replacement for _terrible_ , you guess. but kevin would never tell you that—instead, he’s probably going to take you to the kitchen and make one of those horrible protein shakes of him, and you’re gonna puke it at his feet. it’s a rehearsed scene.

“it’s nothing,” you say, and he looks at you with that face that says _it’s everything but nothing_ , but he doesn’t try to fight you on that. kevin is slowly learning not to fight you in pretty much anything. both because you’re stubborn and because you have a tendency to end all your arguments screaming.

you look around, but doesn't see your uncle getting inside with the rest of the team. “where's the master?”

“oh, he left the court as soon as the siren sounded. he's pretty much pissed at chad for letting them score so close to the end. i wouldn’t want to be him when the master decides his punishment.”

you doesn't comment anything on that, both because you were too out of it to see whatever kevin is talking about, and because the clock is ticking, and every minute you lose won't come back, unless you fight for it. “i need to speak with him.”

“right now? you have to eat something first.” kevin's hand is in your shoulder, and you hate that he can feel the bones under the muscle (but you hate eating even more, so there's that). “or else you'll just fall over.”

kevin, oh kevin. he worries so much that sometimes you want to hit him. and sometimes you want to kiss him, but that’s for later. 

“i’ll find you in the kitchen, then. try to make something only mildly disgusting for me, will you?” you take a deep breath and let go of his arm, testing the strength of your legs. not much, but will do. 

kevin doesn’t say anything, this time, even though he looks like he’s dying to carry you piggyback to the master’s office. you don’t want to think of what would consist in an adequate punishment, if he tried.

you make your way through the crowd, head down so no one can get a glimpse of the tattoo on your cheek, until you’re back to the familiar, oppressive walls of the nest. there’s no one there yet—the players all in the showers, the technical assistants discussing the game. there’s only one person, and it is exactly whom you want to talk to.

your uncle/master is sitting with his back to the door, eyes fixed on the painting behind his desk. _the great wave off kanagawa_. you wonder if he brought it on his years living in japan. you wonder if you would have the same fate, if your uncle hadn’t decided to make you into the epitome of his sport, way before you had the capacity to agree.

you wonder if he has met his father, or if, like you, he was thrown to the care of some distant relative that didn’t want a spare child to raise.

he doesn’t turn to look at you, but that is kind of his whole deal, with you being to distasteful to his eyes or whatever other adjective he fancies to use. the list is long and remembering makes you want to vomit, preferably somewhere close to him—give him a reason to complain about the smell.

it takes you five seconds of silence to decide you’re not turning back. “i want to speak with my father.”

he told you not to ask. and you aren’t asking, are you?

you uncle refuses to turn, which bothers you right now more than it ever did, before. “and what makes you think he wants to talk with you?”

“nothing. but i want to,” you know very well, by now, that being kengo’s son doesn’t entitle you to any shape or form of attention, much less affection. but this is a hill you’re disposed to die on. “he’s still here for like, what? twenty minutes. tell the guards to let me enter east tower.”

your uncle sighs. he sounds exasperated, which is one of the three emotions he lets out around you: exasperation, disappointment, rage. he turns the chair so that he’s looking at you in a way that would make seven year old riko moriyama tremble; but you’re fifteen, and there are few things your uncle hasn’t done to you already. 

“i’m will make this as clear as possible, so that even someone with your limited cognitive capacity will be able to understand, at once.” _stop with the fancy words, old man. you think stupid is the worst thing you have called me?_ “the only thing your father wants with you is to see if you’ll live to the promise i made to him. which was the affirmation that you’ll become the better — and most famous — exy player by the time you turn twenty-five, at most. so you can throw all the tantrums you like, but they won’t make him acknowledge your existence, much less care about you.”

you are stupid. stupidly hopeful. so you ask.

“but you mean that, if i fulfill this promise of yours, he will? acknowledge me, i mean.”

you want to prostate yourself by his feet and beg him to say yes, because if it does— if it’s a yes, than it means you have a chance, it means that you finally have something in which you can throw all your hopes, all your strength; if it’s a yes, it means you’re past praying for a higher god.

if it’s a yes, you need no other for this besides yourself.

tetsuji shrugs. you've never seen him shrugging. “he might. he might not. you would have to ask him, and as i said—”

“he doesn't want to talk with me, i got that. but you think— you think he will?” for a second, you forget that you shouldn’t interrupt him, in any circumstance, if you don’t want another scar on your back. you forget about the rules, and the deference, and the punishment. there’s only one thing that matters; and, for a second, it is close enough to make you forget everything else.

“if it matters so much to you, i think there is a chance.” as if proclaiming the discussion over, he starts to flip over the new files left in his desk—quite surely, informations on the new ravens-to-be. one day, that’ll be you (and kevin, but. _you_ ). and when this day comes, you’ll get what you want, no matter the cost. after all, can it be more than what you’ve already paid? “but then, there isn't always?”

the master says his last words in a quieter voice, so that you can pretend you didn’t hear, so that only the first sentence will stay in our mind, pounding and pounding and _pounding_ into your skull until you have no other option than to let it free. to make it real.

you now have something to burn the whole world for.

(you’re walking over clouds. everything around you is light and shiny and beautiful, in a way that never before you would have thought possible. you almost forget kevin is waiting for you in the kitchen. you forget you have to eat; surely, you’re too happy for that. there’s so many things bubbling inside your chest that you could feed on it for days.

the monstrosity that kevin calls a shake is waiting for you, in all its fluorescent green glory. you down it all quickly, not even processing the awful taste of it. you could take a hundred of them, if kevin asked you. so that he’ll never have to worry again.

he smiles at you—that insufferable, perfect for the camera, white-toothed smile that you tried to copy, practicing it on the mirror until the corners of your mouth felt numb. he smiles with his mouth and his eyes and you want to throw him over the table and kiss him until you enter respiratory failure, so you can both die together.

god, you want to kiss him so much, and he has absolutely no idea.

“someone is looking happy today, don’t you think?” he says, as he sits beside you, his green eyes bright like a star. you never wanted to touch a star, before. now you do.

“if you find out who that is, please tell me,” you say, and then he laughs and then you laugh and if only, both of you think, this moment could last forever.)

* * *

there's a new boy and, like kevin, your master (you're beginning to forget he is your uncle too) tells you that he is yours to tame as you see fit.

unlike kevin, however, you don't know this boy from before. there is nothing in his face or in the way that he walks to make you hold back the pit that's deepening where your heart is supposed to be. and if there's nothing in him to save himself, well— certainly there's not something of the type in you.

his face, when he sets foot in the nest, is distorted in a mask of savagery and rage. like a wolf, rattling against his cage (you, as a bird, were always more elegant in your destruction). _this won't do_ , you think, when he tries to flee not two hours after having arrived. you never knew of someone who did not want to be at the raven’s nest; someone who didn’t long for it, who didn’t hurt someone else for it, who didn’t fight tooth and claw for it.

you would find it unfair if you hadn’t learned that fairness is a fairy tale for sleepy children and scared adults. and you’re neither.

(jean, though— he is the worst of both: scared child. and this won’t do.

but by then, you have already learned how to get an unruly thing to obey. call it personal experience, if you may.)

kevin is by your side (what a silly thing to say; kevin is always by your side) when you enter the room assigned to jean, your feet against the door, wrenching it open. no locks on the raven’s nest. you want to make a scene. you want this new guy to see how everyone will look at him in disdain for being a coward, a runner, a non believer. there's a message your uncle has incumbed you with the transmission, and it has to be as clear so as to avoid repetitions.

(because tetsuji hates to repeat himself and, of course, so do you.)

pure water. drink the words so you can become them.

this jean whatever is much taller than you, but that doesn't make you afraid. you like to think you have a streak of making tall boys kneel at your feet. kevin would agree.

but now he's all folded up in himself, tucked away into a corner of the room as if he could make himself disappear. there's this small, dying part of you that wants to reach a hand and say _i understand._ the biggest part, however, thinks that jean doesn't look so tall cowering like that, isn't it? how easy it would be, to raise your foot and crush him under the sole of your shoe.

“hey frenchie,” you say. he doesn't look up, not when you stop walking just right before him. it pisses you off. the smallest thing can piss you off, these days. “are you deaf? i'm speaking with you.”

behind you, kevin tries to keep his breathing even. by now, he knows that, like your uncle, you can’t stand insubordination; and, like your uncle, every day you choose violence as the appropriate answer to it. 

funny how you look a lot like your uncle, these days. your shadow swapped for his, clinging to you harder as you try to rip it off.

you squat, your eyes now at level with his—or they would be, if he only raised his fucking head. he doesn’t look all that fearsome now, not how he did when he tried to wrestle with the guard holding him still, or when he connected a kick to your uncle’s shin. he’s been caned for that. only some hours here, and he’s already learning. the path you’re all supposed to walk on is made of sharp rocks and mountains. your master sent you there so you can pick apart the pieces of flesh to which this new, fresh boy still stubbornly clings to. 

he breaks the soul; you break the bones. what an amazing duo. what a beautiful family you make.

“frenchie,” you call again, taking your time with every syllable. jean keeps on ignoring you, and you think he must be a little stupid if he still can’t understand how things were going to work for him from now on. and you are not a patient teacher. “i’m gonna go really slow with you right now, but don’t get used to it, okay? well, then.”

you grab his chin between your fingers, forcing him to look up. for a second you regret it—his face is ugly and twisted, tears and snot all mixed up, caked around his nose and mouth. he disgusts you; you, who never cried when your uncle caned you, because he only stopped warning you that it would only make it worse when he’d already etched the words on the soft flesh under your arms, so you wouldn’t forget it. 

your uncle always made you look him in the face, after, so you could attempt to understand how much he despised you. so you could stare into the black pit of his eyes — and aren’t yours turning just the same? — and see your reflection, this vile promise of a thousand mistakes to be made. so you’ll make it with jean just the same, because if there’s one thing you remember of your childhood, is that you were not supposed to turn up like _this_.

(and yet, here you are.)

if anything, jean snarls at you, like he fancies himself some kind of caged lion, some large feline ready to pounce at your jugular. little does he knows that here, you’re all caged birds, every single one of you. hummingbirds, goldfinches, ravens. and soon enough, his wings will be clipped. as were yours.

“my, my. valiant, aren’t we? i wonder how long you’re gonna last.” kevin’s breath hitches. he was never that valiant himself. kevin was already a domesticated canary when he first came. the master only needed to make him stop singing. “i don’t think you’ll be the one to break my record, though. a pity, if i may say. it would be funny to see you try.”

it’s always funny watching the newbies with their faces set and their eyes fixed on the floor as slowly the master drills the words inside their minds. and if it is not the master, it is themselves—from older bird to younger, lessons learned with open hands and closed fists. no one is born a raven; you have to be molded into it.

you have no doubt that jean would have bit you already, if only you weren’t holding him with all your strength. you almost want him to do it, so at least you’ll have a real reason to hurt him. one that doesn’t make your scars sting, afterwards. instead, he looks at you, and through his eyes — blue, like the river that kayleigh used to take you and kevin to bathe in the summer — you see the words clashing against his skull, that same list of adjectives you uncle uses as a knife under you skin. wicked. despicable. wretched. you wonder which of these jean will choose to call you, inside his head. it doesn’t matter—you’re used to any and all of them. 

drink the words so you can become them. if there’s always something hurting, is any of the pain real or is it simply the default mode?

“get your hands off me,” he says, his words rough, the english twisted and broken under his tongue. “i’ll kill you. i’ll get out of here and then i’ll kill every single one of—”

there’s a switchblade in your pocket, the initials n. w. carved on the wooden handle, a gift from a childless father to a fatherless child. you grip it without the usual thought of how perfectly it fits the palm of your hand—rightly and righteous. nathan told you your father had it made for him, so in the end, you tell yourself, isn’t it a gift from him, too? 

a tiny drop of blood drips from jean’s cheek as you touch it with the blade. you have not yet learned to steady your hand completely, but in time you will. just as you will learn to focus your anger around you instead of inside you. for now, the promise of it is enough to keep jean still under you hands.

he is not a bird. you are the bird; jean is but a mouse caught in your talons. you don’t shy away of hurting him. is not like he isn’t going to be dead soon enough.

“easy now, won’t you? it’s better this way.” _trust me_ , you want to say, but it’s so hilarious that you keep it inside. “you wouldn’t want my hand to slip right now. but then, i don’t think i’m opposed to it. and what you want doesn’t matter anymore.” you trace the arch of his cheekbones with the flat of the blade, all the while delighting in the way he shivers. “so you can behave. surprising, truly.”

“riko—” kevin begins, his voice small behind you, his tone that same pleading one you used when you were a child. now you hate it. now you think you could hate him if you tried.

“don’t, kevin.” you said, and he cowers, his breathing ragged, twisting his fingers as if it somehow could take him to another dimension; one where you didn’t twist in yourself. 

someday, you know, you are going to use that same knife against his skin. you don’t allow yourself to get sad over it. it’s just the way it goes, the way the earth keeps spinning around the sun and around itself. translation, rotation. kevin looks hideous in red—be it the uniform or blood.

jean watches the small exchange with rabid attention. he’s smart, you can see it. but there’s too much pride inside his lungs. he will try to fight it, fight you. but he will learn. or he’ll die. both choices are equally bad, in the end.

“listen here, _frenchie_. i don’t know from where you came, or who you were before, and it doesn’t matter to me. because here, you are mine, and the only things that matter to you are the things i say that matter. and the only things you’re allowed to do are the ones i say so. because your father handed you to mine as if you were a sack of coin, and coin is nothing more than what his owner makes of it. do you get it? you’re mine to do as i wish, which means both that you can only do what i want you to, and that i can do whatever i want with you.”

you sense that he’s about to speak, so you press down the blade, right in the part of his cheek where a number could rest. three strikes. three, like the tree you had once fallen of. the same three of redhead boy, breathing the sweet air of paris, or milan, or anywhere, hand in hand with a living, breathing mother. any air is sweeter, and every sky is brighter than the back ceiling of the nest. 

“look at yourself in the mirror, and don’t forget what you see. this is you from now until the end of your days.” you smile, and the motion of it is foreign on your lips. you wonder if you forget how do it, or if you never learned at all. “welcome to the raven’s nest, jean.”

(your arms cradle kevin in bed, your fingers threading through thick, curly hair. you’re afraid that they might slip and cut him, somehow. you’re always cutting things and cutting people. you’re always hurting someone, or yourself. it’s second nature. it’s an acquired taste. 

if you turn your head, you can feel where the switchblade rests under the pillow, closed and harmless. you can’t sleep without it near you, even though the possibility of someone storming the nest at night feels like a child’s nightmare and nothing else.

if anything, the person most likely to kill you is yourself.

“kevin,” you whisper, your lips brushing against the shell of his ear. his hands tighten on your waist where he holds you, a quiet sign that he’s awake. “are you afraid of me?”

you need him to say no. because if he says yes— because if not even kevin remembers the time when there still was something good inside you, did it even exist at all?

how can you know the good parts of yourself weren’t just a series of wild dreams?

“how could i?” he answers, lips moving against the skin of your neck. you hope he can’t feel your body shivering, but it’s useless. you’re glued against each other, as if you’re ten years old and your backs are covered with lashes. you can feel every breath that goes in and out of each others lungs; the only way of making sure you’re still alive, after everything.

kevin has a tell when he lies. it’s too dark for you to see each other’s faces, so you can’t watch for it, can’t be sure if what he’s saying is true, or if he’s just afraid of making you mad. because everything makes you mad, these days. even kevin.

it’s better this way, you think. easier to close your eyes and pretend you believe him.)

* * *

call it sick; call it twisted. call the cops and have them put you in jail for it. call the press and make a statement. call your uncle, your father, your brother and all your ancestors, and have them burn your name out of the family tapestry. call a star and make a wish.

it’s useless now. you’re past the point of pretending it isn’t real, past the point of denying, past the point of scratching the skin of your chest as if somehow you could reach your heart and rip it out.

(you don’t have a heart, though, so what’s the point?)

and the thing is: kevin has always been beautiful, but now, you think, now that he stands much taller and stronger than you, a carved statue out of one of his own history books, apollo and hyacinth both, there’s something in the dip of muscle at the base of his pelvis that calls to your eyes like you had never thought it could. something at the straight lines of his hips and the curved ones of his biceps, something at the bumps of his spine at night and the slope of his nape at sunlight, that makes you want to fall to your knees and swallow him whole.

under the covers, some nights, while he’s sleeping next to you and you can feel yourself hard and prone to beg, you place your hands over your lower belly, where desire burns warm and steady all day, and fancy you can feel the raised letters carved on your skin. k. e. v. i. n. like a mark of ownership—and to you, who was never owned by anyone, they feel strangely comfortable, somehow familiar as if they were always there. you just hadn’t noticed them before. 

you dream of him, more nights than not. more days than not, too. you can’t get him out of your mind, which was okay when you were thirteen and seeing each other all day long, but it’s borderline maddening when you are nineteen and thinking about his eyes as much as his cock.

you dream of his hands, going lower than what the usual shoulder massage he gives you requires, trailing down your back and then lower, still, tracing the self-imposed lines on the insides of your thighs. you dream of the space where his shoulder and neck meet, of how your lips would fit perfectly against it as you licked the salt of his skin. and you dream of other things, too, like how the swell of his ass would feel between your teeth, or how his hips would feel moving between your legs, or how his cock would feel driving in and out of you.

and the other thing is: you wish you wouldn’t dream these. you wish you could somehow erase it all from your mind, since the beginning, since the seed that made these thoughts grow and grow and grow until all you can feel inside your ribcage are the roots taking place, sucking you of every drop of water until they’re ready to tore this human fleshed cage of your body and bare themselves to the world.

you spent three months walking on your tiptoes, afraid that something would give you away, that kevin would notice the catch in your voice when you wished him good night as he held you after a nightmare. but kevin, bless him, is so unabashedly oblivious that when you’re patching him up after a caning, you can let you fingers wander down his back with the excuse of checking for other, smaller bruises, and he says nothing.

(there's a mole, right under his left ear, and you have lost count of how many times you had to sink your nails into the skin of your hand, the pain distracting you enough so that you forget the urge to kiss that exact spot; and ruin everything.)

sometimes, it’s almost as if it is just a dream. when it’s like this, kevin can touch you without you having the need to suppress a shudder. he can whisper something in your ear without your heartbeat picking up so fast that he might hear it. he can lie on his bed — and sometimes, on _your_ bed —, shirtless, studying some bullshit like the lives of america’s forefathers, and you can look at him without feeling the pull to skim your fingers over bare skin.

and then sometimes, you think, you might die from it. a disease that spreads from your chest, plugging up your mouth until every breath hurts. you look at kevin sleeping peacefully on his bed, this unknowing, marvelous creature he is, and it takes everything inside you not to shake him awake and tell him—what? i need you? he knows that; you two need each other, or else survival becomes just a fever dream on the backs of your minds. i want you? it sounds base, somehow. depraved. dirty. and besides, you have him already—he has always been yours. i love you? love is just a kind of emptiness. but more importantly, you don’t think yourself capable of it. there’s a limit to the lies you can tell yourself.

and so it — for lack of a better name, a definition, a thing you can pick up and break — stays inside you, burning. trying to regrow the pieces of you rot has consumed. you want to climb onto kevin’s bed and get naked atop him, and then you want to get him naked under you. you want a million things. you want, above all else, to stop wanting.

(you want him to pin you to the wall like a sinner. christ on the crucifix. you want to be sanctified. you want to be released.)

you’re gonna die from it, or you’re gonna get yourself killed. the prospect isn’t as bad as someone would think.

“you’re hopeless, the two of you,” jean says, sitting by your side on the bench as you watch the newbies practice. kevin is inside the court because he couldn’t resist ordering them around, and because he’s insufferable, which is what you like the most about him.

you could hit jean for that, but it’s true, and you’re tired of denying it, tired of pretending, tired of running. so you’ll let it pass, just this once. 

“so are we,” you agree, even though you know there’s yet hope for kevin. you’re the one with a countdown atop your head, an expiration date set long ago. 

there’s hope for kevin yet, but not for you—you’re already dead. 

(your uncle knows. you think he’s happy for it, almost, now that he has a proper, tangible motive for wanting to spit on your face, now that he can curse you and hit you even more, so he can leave it very clear in this stupid brain of yours that trying to act upon it means not only your death, but the death of your uncle’s legacy, and he took too much blood out of your back for you to throw it all away now.

like a confirmation of his worst predictions, you truly are the wicked creature he always took you for. 

it’s the last stone over your tomb. useless, disgusting, wretched. and gay. god, what a sight you make. god, what a tragedy.)

* * *

“riko,” kevin calls from somewhere you can’t see, his voice fuzzy and warm as if he’s behind a wall of cotton candy. you have always wanted to know what it tastes like. “riko, what’s going on?”

he’s standing behind you on the bathroom mirror, and you look at him without seeing him at all. you aren’t seeing yourself either, but then you were always more of a ghost than anything else.

“nothing,” you say, because it’s true. nothing has been going on and nothing will. all this is just a big fucking load of nothing, until you become nothing yourself.

“you’ve been standing there for like, ten minutes,” he says, and he sounds worried like you don’t remember him sounding in a long time. you wonder if it still would happen, if he knew the things you think about him, the things you want him to do to you, the things you want to do to yourself. “and you’re crying.”

“i'm not crying,” you answer, dumbfounded, like he has told you the sky is yellow and you have to tell him it is not. but you raise your hand to your cheek, just to be sure, and there it is—salt water, running down your face. “oh.”

 _oh_ , you say, because you didn't think you could cry, anymore. 

it's almost a relief.

kevin takes a step in your direction. you remember being ten years old and biting the soft flesh of your arm to muffle the ugly sounds of crying, inside this very bathroom, every time your father came to the nest but didn't come to see you. and you remember kevin opening the door and sitting beside you, his arms warm and welcoming around your back, your ear over his chest, tracking the beat of his heart. the sheer aliveness of it, something so unquestionably out of your reach.

you're not ten anymore, however, and neither is he. right now, you want to scream at him to go away, you want to shove him back until he's out of the room. because if he comes closer— because if he tries to hug you, to _touch_ you, you're gonna short circuit, like a lovestruck cartoon character, like the sick pantomime of a human being you are.

if kevin were to touch you, you would kiss him. the fact that you know it beforehand and, more than anything, the fact that you choose not to fight it scares you more than the prospect of the kiss itself.

so, say you were to kiss him. kevin would not kiss you back. you know this as you know the earth takes one year to finish its course around the sun. you know this because it is an undeniable, unforgettable truth. this sickness is yours alone, your burden to carry until the finish line, your sin to die under. and there isn’t anything — and you can say this for sure, _anything,_ for you know kevin like the palm of your hand, like your own body — in the way kevin speaks or acts, anything in the gleam of his eyes or the relaxed posture of his shoulders when he’s around you that lets you even begin to form the thought that me might, somehow, kiss you back.

(the worst thing is that there’s this chance he might kiss you back, actually, but it wouldn’t be for love. it wouldn’t even be desire. it would be _fear._

you can’t resent him for that. kevin is a creature of your making, after all.)

“it’s nothing. i don’t know— it’s nothing.” and the worst thing is that you didn’t even notice the tears before, but now that kevin made you pay attention, they can’t seem to stop falling. you feel ridiculous, because you really don’t know why this is happening. nothing out of the ordinary happened, nothing that you aren’t well used to. and yet, there you are, like a child, like someone who is weak, like someone who is lost. 

kevin doesn’t seem convinced. he takes another step, his arm reaching out to you, the tips of his fingers so close to your back that if only let yourself fall back a centimeter or two, then— 

“i said _it's nothing_.” your voice is louder, harsher, even with your throat clogged by tears. you make a show of a grimace, so he can get scared and flee, so he can leave you alone with your misery “what, you don't understand english anymore? all that fucking french with jean has gotten to your head?”

go away, you want to say. _go away before i do another thing i'll regret._

and then kevin takes a step back. _ah, there it is,_ you think. his face, however, keeps the worried expression, as if he's battling with himself if it's worthy to try and shake you out of it. or talk you out of it. or hug you all of it, if he's feeling specially brave, which you doubt.

kevin takes a step back and it's an admission of defeat, for you both. for him, that already accepted that there's nothing he can do to save you, that you're out of his reach, locked inside a stormy corner of your own mind. and for you, that for all you cursed and cried about it, can look into the mirror and see the splitting image of your uncle superimposed on you face. his anger, his scorn, his hate.

(uncle, the disgusting creature i've become is nothing but a shadow of yourself)

kevin takes a step away from you, and closer to jean. they fit so well together, with their whispers in french, their soft curves slotted against the other. you were always full of jagged edges. you were always someone meant to keep others away.

“i'm worried about you,” he says, but his back is already half turned to you, his mind already half outside the room, his instincts turned to flight mode, like the birds you’ll never cease to be.

you scoff, and kevin shakes his head and starts walking away. you want him to look back, just for a second. you want him to see your face as you watch him leave; you want him to see your face when it's not distorted by rage; you want to let him know the pain you're feeling, the way it emerges from the space between your lungs, uninvited, and closes its maw around your bones.

you want him to look back so you can can fall down your knees and beg forgiveness.

“it’s too late now, don’t you agree?” you say, half for kevin and half for yourself. the stone above your chest is already set in place, and now the only thing left is to wait until you sink. there is a strange kind of peace in recognizing the weight over your back as proximity with death. like a raven, sat atop your shoulders, its red eyes glistening. it won’t have to wait much longer. 

“maybe it is,” kevin says, and if you had your knife, you would throw it at his face. but he’s already gone, and you’re alone again, which is how you were supposed to be since the beginning. you’re alone because you honed your thorns so big and so sharp that there’s a wide radius of distance to be kept from you if one wants to avoid permanent damage. 

the thing is: how do you keep distance from yourself?

 _you’re wrong,_ you want to say. you want to storm inside jean’s room, where kevin has probably holed himself up, and you want to shake him until he wakes up. _there are no maybes anymore._

(“i’m sorry.” kevin is lying face up on his bed, the distance between your bodies which would’ve once be seen as insufferable now almost comfortable. you don’t ask to sleep close to him anymore, too afraid of losing control. he, too, is likely afraid of you losing control, though in vastly different way. 

you don’t say anything. there’s no need for that—the point of this is letting kevin talk before he shuts himself up once more, before you smother another part of him. your forgiveness matter only ‘cause most human beings like to have their excuses accepted. 

also, if he were to say sorry and you were to say no, he would never ask again, and you like to see him beg, if only because you can pretend he’s asking of you what you want to give him.

“i shouldn’t have say that. i didn’t mean it. you know that, right?”

you sigh, putting the notebook down on your lap, since you won’t be getting more study today. ancient china, because there’s not one chair about japan, so you take what you can. “didn’t mean what?”

“that it’s too late,” he turns his face to you, and for a second is like you’re seven and this is kevin’s first night on the nest. your legs would move to his side by themselves, if they could. instead, you bring your knees below your chin, the movement stretching the skin in the places where you opened yourself bare; the pain a momentaneous reminder of your status as _still alive._ “for you. i mean, i don’t— it’s just hard, sometimes. it feels like a dead end, like there’s nothing i can do anymore, and it pisses me off. but sometimes i think that maybe it’s better if i wait, you know, because i’ve already waited so long, so what are some more five years. i believe it’s gonna be okay after that, after here. but still, i want to do more. i know i can—”

“kevin,” you say, and just like that he shuts up and looks at you expectantly. you think of a dog waiting for a treat, and then you think _jesus christ, was i the one that did this to him?_ “i forgive you.”

you don’t say anything about the things he has just told you, the dead ends and the five years. instead, you pretend you didn’t understand, and kevin doesn’t bother with explanations because, in the end, he just wanted to take that out of his chest. it’s easier this way, where he pretends he isn’t still desperately clinging to the pieces of you he can recognize from childhood, and you pretend these aren’t the exact pieces you’re doing the most of throwing away.

there’s only the matter of waiting and seeing where all of this will get you both. nowhere nice, that you know. but then, considering the things you’ve always known about yourself, how could it ever be?)

* * *

you do not know your skin when it is not painted purple.

the bruises on your torso have become as much a part of you as your hair, your knees, your lips. the image of your body without them seems alien to your mind. wrong.

the bruises have their meaning: obedience, learning, acceptance. quenched fury. the beast inside you dismantled and put into a place that works best for your master. for your family. for your future.

like everything in your life, you try to dominate it. pain inflicted on you works best when you ask for it. so you learn to ask for it—or better yet, to demand it, for there’s a certain degree of unpredictability in the act of asking, in the waiting for a answer, that you could never go along with. 

it starts easy; the ravens were always know to share their bodies with each other as well as they share punches. it starts in the locker room, in the highest row of the benches, in the janitor’s closet. every room in the red hallway is free game to you as you are free game to whomever is inside them.

soon enough there’s more complications then you’re willing to deal with. a comment here, a cat whistle there, someone trying to defy you at practice. and you would prefer not needing to superimpose the memory of how good their cocks felt inside you with the ones of you beating all of them into submission. a kiss with a fist. and you give more of these kisses than you can count.

like uncle, like nephew, after all.

so you expand your hunting grounds. the boys of the football team are your favorites, if only because they have grown so used to violence they give it anywhere, without you needing to ask. you ask anyway, if only to be sure that the marks will be bigger and last longer, that you can put your hands over your hips at court, in a seemingly innocent gesture, and suppress a moan.

(because if sex isn't meant to leave behind on your body a bruise bigger than the ones made by familiar hands, if it isn’t to show to everyone that at least you make a decent enough hole for some guy to stick his cock into, if it isn’t to tell that even with all the wretchedness some part of you is still desirable to someone, still wanted, then what's the fucking point of it?)

you want death, you say, but you want death with dignity. well, there’s dignity on letting the boys of the football team pass you around like some two cents whore, you fancy. some kind of selflessness, auto flagellation, complete surrender; and like christ gave himself to men, you give yourself to the first man who asks.

they aren’t going to say anything, because this could destroy their careers as fast as it would yours, though you don’t think it’s likely they’ll lose their life for it. you would—no questions about that. quick as a cockroach (how funny) your uncle smashes under his feet. a very gay cockroach, but still.

and it’s good, for a while. the exchange of positions, the minutes lying under them, your muscles loose and relaxed, your body pliant for them to do as they see fit. and then when it’s not good anymore, you keep doing it, because you don’t how to do it any other way, because it feels empty when it doesn’t hurts. because it feels like a waste when there is not a piece of you left behind in someone else’s hands. or teeth.

if sex is going to feel like this for the rest of your life, you might as well get used to it.

(kevin doesn’t ask anything. it is a cycle: he knows, and you know that he knows, and he knows that you know that he knows. but he stays silent, even when you notice he’s using almost no pressure on your neck, the massage now more a trailing of his fingers in the painted parts of your skin than anything.

he doesn’t ask, you don’t tell. once you vowed that you wouldn’t hide anything from each other, but now you are a man of more secrets than it’s possible to keep track, as you know kevin is too, by the time he spends holed up in jean’s room, out of your sight, or the trajectory of your knife.

maybe they’re planning your downfall. it would be nice, you think. it would also be funny, because it would amount to nothing. you would like to see them try; you would like to see them hoping for something, if only so that they could remind you of a time when you permitted yourself that. to hope.

like a god, you crave adoration. like a king, you demand submission. you don’t like the way into which the scales tipped; but it’s not like your opinion was ever asked, anyway.)

* * *

you have tasted refusal in the roof of your mouth enough times to recognize the sour flavor of it—terrible when you mixed with anger, worse now that it is always in the company of hate.

as a kid, you would sit down in a corner of your room, hug your knees and try not to cry. as a teenager, you would pace restlessly, throwing to the floor whatever you could get your hands off—books, portraits, pillows, clothes. at twenty-one, you quietly sit down on the mattress, still dressed on the elegant, designer-cut clothes you choose to convince andrew minyard to sign with edgar allen, and let the rage simmer.

the only good part of it was that you could chainsmoke by the window as the car crossed the path to columbia and back. but now you’re inside again, and things are worse than when you left, and you need a fucking drag before you do something which you’ll regret for five seconds before you get over it.

your fingers drum against the headboard in the same rhythm as kevin pacing around the room, muttering to himself. you might break his legs before the day ends.

“i just— i can’t understand _why_ he acted like that. i mean, he’s fucking good, and he has absolutely nothing to lose by coming here. what does he think an ex-juvie like him will achieve in columbia, of all places?”

you would give everything not to be having this conversation, but there you are, having this conversation. worse: you'll have to do it again, but with your uncle, and he isn't much inclined to find your answers satisfactory, no matter the content.

“you tell me, kevin,” you say, calm and collected, like you weren't ready to go back to columbia and skin andrew minyard alive for his insolence. “you found him, you studied him, you chose him. so tell me.”

if kevin could fold his body within himself and disappear, he would’ve done that long ago to flee you. not something you hold against him: you too would’ve done the same thing.

“there’s no possible explanation besides him being a thick-headed asshole.” _is it?_ you want to ask. it is always kevin who leads the proposals, while you stand back and let him have a moment of shine; still close enough that you can hear everything that’s being said. “or maybe he’s just spiteful and, well— at this point there’s nothing i can say more than conjectures. he wasn’t supposed to refuse.”

“and yet,” you say. two words that sum up everything.

kevin flops down on his bed, his face between his hands, looking down. a disobedient child. or pet. “i’m sorry.”

you do not want him to be sorry. you want him to be right, to do the things as you ask him to, so there’ll be no need to be sorry. because he can put on some sad eyes and suddenly he’s forgiven, but you have to grovel at your uncle’s knees like a scorned dog and it still isn’t enough. twenty-one years later, and he hasn’t forgiven you for being born.

the thing is: for a so called perfect _court_ , you’re quite small. only three of you, and the number doesn’t seem likely to come up soon, now that minyard is not taking part. all the other players you and (mostly) kevin looked up lack something, be it the skill or force of will to survive the raven’s nest. 

minyard has it all. minus the compliance, it seems.

“you think that’s enough? that you can fuck up and then make a pout and say _i’m sorry_ and everything will be all fine and dandy again?” you don’t remember everything being fine and dandy ever, but it’s just getting to the point when it becomes really hard to keep yourself in check. you can feel the blood in your ears, thumping like road music; the soundtrack to disaster. “do you think the master will be happy with that?”

“no.” kevin still isn’t looking up, and that bothers you, but you also think it’s better like this. it’s easier to split his self in two — the one you want to kiss, the one you want to kill — when you can’t see the green of his eyes.

“no. because it doesn’t matter that you were the one who failed to bring minyard, since i was the one who told him we’re ready. that he was ready.” you remember knocking at his office a week ago, your hands behind your back as you asked for permission to travel with kevin to columbia, to bring another raven to its rightful nest. permission to fill your uncle’s pockets with money. and your father’s, obviously. it always ends in your father. “therefore, i will carry the punishment, even though i don’t carry the blame. poetic, don’t you think? beautiful, in a sense, if only it didn’t left me bleeding at his feet.”

kevin stays silent. you can see him wringing his hands, waiting, his body programed to stay in place in the same way a dog is taught to sit and wait for a treat. kevin sits and waits for whatever you’ll be throwing at him. 

you want a cigarette. a needle. a knife. anything but your bare fists. anything but this body; anything but yourself. you want a way out, you want the antidote. you want and you want and you want, even knowing there's no point in it, even though nothing you want wants you back.

and so you stay, still in the middle of a circle that's forever spinning, forever moving, forever changing.

(well, that isn’t fair. you can change too. for worse.)

it works like this: anger burns underneath your skin until everything arounds you becomes blurred, like asphalt on a hot summer day. and then, like every good thing brought into a temperature too hot to resist, it explodes.

(anyone can pretend to be prepared, but try to be close beside an explosion, for once: it will always happen in the second you swore it wouldn’t, not yet.)

and for all that talk about anger making people lose their sense, lose their minds, you can describe in perfect detail every moment after you decided that if the punishment wasn’t supposed to be yours, then you would heartily give it to its rightful owner.

nevermind that you don’t know its exact extension at this time. you were always awfully good with estimatives.

you throw your body over his, lighting quick — not that it matters; kevin wouldn’t dare dodging —, and easily as that he’s pinned under you. and easily as that you dominate him, because kevin has learned that fighting back will only earn him more bruises at the end, so he closes his eyes not to look at your face—you can’t tell if he does that because he doesn’t want to connect the image of your face with the feeling of the fists going down on his face, or because he’s too disgusted by you that, not being able to turn his face away, he prefers total darkness. and maybe it’s best you don’t know. blessed ignorance and the lies we tell each other, and the lies we pretend to tell each other, so we may feel better with ourselves.

you don’t remember when you have last felt good with yourself, so it’s not like you miss it.

and there’s also this other thing: with your legs straddling kevin like that, you could almost pretend you were riding him, if you weren’t too busy drawing blood from his face. sex has always been violent, so this would be just a step up; one more degree heaven bound. (so why do you feel like you’re always going down?)

of course, if you spend too much time chasing this rabbit down you would most like stop what you were doing, hold your face with your bloodied hands and cry. instead, you throw it all out of your mind, because you don’t have time for anything besides practice, much less going insane. to think about your actions is to assign significance to them. 

and everything is meaningless when you know you won’t be getting anywhere.

so you don't think about how you could be kissing kevin instead of hitting him if only you didn't hate him and you didn't hate yourself enough to tell him. and you don't think about how you two could be far away from the nest if you worked together. and most of all, you don't think about how kevin will dutifully patch you up after the master is done with you; how he will clean the wounds and stitch the skin close anew, all the while the bruises you've made in him are left open to fester. all the while he's left behind to rot.

there can only be one better player, in the end. and it’s gonna be you, even if it isn’t true.

(you know it is, though).

your whole body shakes above him, as it ends. you think, catching himself just before you start inflicting permanent damage, that if you let your anger explode for long, the next thing to blow off is yourself. 

“next time,” you say, grabbing him by the lapels of his suits, your faces so close that you might bend your head just a few inches and kiss his bloodied lips. “you fuck up, i'll make you wish you died in that car crash with your mother. am i understood?”

kevin nods. you feel somehow disappointed because he can still move after the beating, and frankly, you would like a lot to break his neck right now, but that ain’t gonna be pretty, and you have another mess to clean. kevin’s mess.

you stand up, not so discreetly leaning against the bed’s headboard for support. kevin lays very still, deadlike and silent, while you wash your hands, taking the utmost care to remove the blood under your nails. your knuckles are completely busted, however, so you rummaged inside your drawers for a pair of black gloves, and when you leave, you take the care of stepping very far from where kevin’s laying. you don't want blood in your shoes.

by the time you come back, you know you'll be covered by it.

(he's still silent as he tends to the cuts over your back, stitching you together with blue thread that contrasts against the paleness of a skin that never feels the sun. you don't miss the fact that his face has been cleaned. most likely jean’s doing.

you wonder if you should go into his room and hit him for it. but then you wonder if kevin would run there as soon as you were gone and put jean together. and then you wonder if you shouldn't hit kevin for that, too. protective measures. you don't want anyone getting ideas, least of all yourself.

“be careful,” you say, even though you know he’s doing his best. if you don’t know the feeling of his hands on your skin then you can’t dream about it so vividly later. and you don’t need to get sick imagining jean’s hands on his face, kevin’s hands inside jean’s pants, someone’s mouth around god knows where.

you close your hands into fists until you can feel the nails slicing your palm open in half moons. no one needs a reprise from earlier, least of all kevin.

you let out a long, deep sigh, and hold your face it your hands so it won’t fall down—so your whole body won’t disassemble and show to the world the mismatched puzzle your uncle put into place. none of your pieces fit against each other; and yet, you stay, a marvel of engineering and will to survive. the proof against everything that has been thought right.

if it were another day, you would’ve turned your face to kevin and said i’m sorry without uttering a single word.

today, you don’t.)

* * *

you were never a fan of beer, or to be honest, of any type of alcoholic beverage. this was much more kevin’s thing, with bottles of vodka that would suddenly become empty when left at his reach, his body mellow and his speech slurred.

cigarettes are better in this sense, because short of being the only thing that can leave you pleasantly relaxed, it isn’t powerful enough to make you say something you might better not to, something that should stay hidden, something yours and no one else’s.

you don’t wanna do whatever kevin is doing right now.

“one more trophy for the master to leave in a glass cage so he can boast to his friends ‘oh yes look at it yes yes another championship won see how well i train this kids see how well i beat them up!” you have watched scenes like this enough times to easily comprehend the words he’s saying, even if most people couldn’t hope to, at this point. kevin punctuates every comma with a substantial swig of vodka. “and they all go and say ‘really tetsuji what an amazing work you doing! what a incredible coach to these bunch of psychopathic, fucked up youngsters! you surely deserve a standing ovation!’ so they stand up and just clap clap clap and all the while the master is with that smug expression on his face and what did he do to deserve it? i’m saying, _what did he do to deserve it?_ ”

jean raises his own bottle of red wine mixed with whatever will leave him drunk faster, gulps a quarter of it down at once. “he hit us!”

“yeah, that’s right!” kevin taps his bottle against jean’s, a toast to winning a championship and losing yourself at the same time. “you’re damn right that’s the only thing he did.”

and then he looks at you, like he forgot you were there, in the opposite corner of the room, and that tetsuji might be just as wretched as he claims you to be, but at the end of things he keeps on being your uncle — your family — no matter your opinion on it.

“... right?” he asks, and you too raise your bottle of vodka the smallest bit, the smallest concession, the smallest toast. “see? i knew we could all reach an agreement. if only we could be drunk all the time.”

you swallow down the need to let it clear that you are not drunk, not at all. let kevin have his small pleasures. let him think that you too need a addiction that makes you see the world distinct from reality. you’re not even addicted to cigarettes, or you wouldn’t endure the long days locked in the nest, smoke detectors carefully disguised in the black ceiling. 

if there was one thing you were addicted to, maybe it was fleeing for the beds of the football players late at night, but a few months ago your uncle let it clear that he has the monopoly over the bruises you can sport and that he will not tolerate that you twist pain into pleasure. and now you can’t even use sex as a crutch to pretend you are wanted.

and now your body is just as unknown to you as your mind.

“i guess,” jean says, and you pretend you don’t notice the sideways glance he throws at you. kevin is too blinded by former days of glory at your side to fully admit what you have done to yourself, but jean does not have the same luxury. jean looks at you and sees every single black spot, every lie, every flaw. 

a monster is not a monster when you used to sing him to sleep, and though the roles were reversed, and it was you who sung kevin until the tears stopped flowing, the concept remains one and the same.

“well, at least we won, right? we should be celebrating! i mean, come on. every other team would. we should be in a party. hell, we should throw the fucking party ourselves.”

you look at jean, jean looks back at you. kevin is, and you can say that only to yourself, almost cute when he’s drunk. but there’s no place for cuteness in the nest in the same sense there isn’t place for alcoholism. or parties. or anything besides exy, besides what the master says.

above all, there isn’t place for conjectures, or anything that resembles hope.

you should be happy. after all, you’re winning, right? and if you’re winning, it means you’re the best, and if you’re the best it means that your father is bound to notice you. it shouldn’t take much longer. maybe he’s waiting until you graduate to see how well you’ll manage in a professional team. you have built your life in maybes, so one more isn’t that much of a problem. 

it is, in fact, but there isn’t anything you can do about it.

the raven’s are the first team to win the exy national championship three years in a row. there’s a place in history with your name written on it — kevin’s too, and you can’t even be mad about that; he always loved history — and that should be enough. but it isn’t, not when you’ve already given away so much of you.

(and all that for what? your father’s love at the end of a bargain; a family for your sanity, for your dignity, for the person you were before you found out he wouldn’t rise to the task. you gave all this and heaven too. you gave everything you could and then everything you could not.

but your hands are still red; still empty.)

it’s all or nothing, now. you won’t settle for anything less. because if you do— well, if you do then you threw yourself away for nothing. then you’ve killed yourself and lived again for nothing. then you’ve lost yourself and dressed up as the farthest thing you could find for nothing.

now the mask is glued to your face. now you can’t take it out, even if you wished to.

(which you don’t.)

“this can be a party,” you say. if things get quiet kevin will fall asleep and if kevin isn’t there to mediate you and jean will inevitably be at each other’s throats in minutes — more like jean will provoke you until you are at his throat, but still. you don’t want to leave yet. you spent too many minutes feigning the smile you used to practice in front of the mirror — in similitude to kevin’s own — so that every camera could get a good shot of you, so your face would be in every newspaper, so there wasn’t any chance that your father and your brother might just not see it, not know it. “there’s alcohol already. what else do we need?”

“music, for once.” kevin doesn’t waste time selecting one of those awful hip hop tunes you hate but he absolutely loves. “and drugs, but no one here uses drugs, so it’s fine.”

“alcohol is a drug too, in case you forgot,” jean says, just before kevin shoves him by the shoulder. they’re sitting too close together. they do everything too close together. 

“the only thing i forgot is how dull you are, and you’ve just happened to remind me.” kevin brings his bottle to his lips again, notices it is empty, throws it under the bed. “riko,” he says. his voice always sounded softer when calling your name. you wonder why that would be, after everything. “stop isolating yourself and come sit here.”

this is the time you say no. this is the time you don’t even have to say it—just look at him and it’ll be answer enough. instead, you crawl in kevin’s direction on your fours, because you told yourself you weren’t drunk but you’ve been drinking that vodka sip by sip for a while now, and your brain is sort of fuzzy, sort of electric. 

you sit down. _closer,_ kevin says. _close enough,_ you think, and yet you move until your knees are touching. he throws a hand over your shoulder, smiles at you, says something your ears are ringing too much to hear. you can feel your heart picking up. you can smell the alcohol on his breath. you know you’re just sitting there, looking at him as if you’ve turned stupid, but you can’t help it. 

kevin shakes his hand over your eyes and the spell lifts. “earth to riko! you listening to me?”

“i’m s—” you begin, then shake your head and start again. “i was thinking about something else.”

kevin doesn’t ask you what—a blessing, since there is a very high chance you’d have slipped and said you. he just smiles. you don’t remember the last time he smiled so much in such a short period of time without the cameras focused on him. on you two.

“i said, it’s not a real party if we’re not dancing!” he’s just shaking his body without any coordination. you didn’t know hip hop could be danced to. even jean is moving his shoulders in the rhythm.

you stay still and kevin looks at you strange, like you’re a machine with a malfunction he can’t find the cause. “what?”

“i don’t know how to dance.”

“well shit,” he says, and then he takes another big gulp of vodka from your bottle before standing up. his legs wobble like jell-o, and you have to hold him or else he’ll fall face down into the wood floor. “me neither. can’t believe we had all those classes and your uncle never thought about some dancing lessons for… i don’t know, are there exy balls somewhere? sure some fancy country in europe has them. jean, are there any exy balls in france?”

you’re sure jean is going to say no, because frankly, the idea of a whole ballroom decorated with exy flags makes you want to laugh. but you’re not paying attention to jean; all you can see are kevin’s outstretched arms in your direction, waiting to bring you up. “what? come on!”

“but i don’t know how to dance.” _maybe if i say it enough times his drunk brain will get,_ you think, but there you are, giving him you hand so he can pull you up. kevin has become so tall that he can easily fit your head under his chin without getting on his tiptoes. there was a time you two would sleep together and wake up exactly like that, bodies plastered to each other, opposed magnets. was—past tense. 

kevin doesn’t let go of your hands. instead, he starts shaking his body wildly, taking you with him. “like hell i do either! but the things is that there isn’t any secret to it. you just need to move.”

he says like it’s easy. to noise making, sing. just move your body and suddenly you’re dancing. forget about the song, about the place, about yourself. make it so that the world begins and ends inside your bones, on the arch of your feet, in the sway of your hips.

and dance.

so you do it, god knows how. you throw your arms around and you dance, you and kevin inside a bubble where everything is purple and the bruises on your torso look the same as the rest of your skin. and even jean rises up from his corner, wine forgotten alongside your vodka, the three of you in a tight circle, elbows and knees hitting without a care in the world.

you want to shout so loudly your uncle will hear. you want to fall down and accidentally break your ankle so you won’t be able to play anymore. you want to cry.

and you want them to hold their hands and make a circle around you, and you want to stand in the middle of them and, more than anything, if just for a second, you want to hear them laugh and spin around you as, slowly, you take off your skin and dance around your bones.

(you’re lying in the floor with you head touching kevin’s. jean is snoring down on the other side, the bottle of wine cradled in his arms like a newborn baby. kevin’s hands find your hair, his fingers looping on the strands. “you don’t need to be jealous of him,” he says. he’s still drunk. so are you.

“i’m not jealous of jean,” you say, as if it’s obvious, because it is. 

“i’ve always liked you the most, you know.” kevin’s voice is a whisper to the ceiling; an admission of defeat. he tries to hate you but he can’t. “even though.”

he turns, then—fixes his eyes on the side of your face. you stay looking up because you can’t face him or else the thing that’s still holding you up will collapse. he’s wondering if anything could have gone differently. you know it couldn’t, so you don’t spend time wondering.

“even though,” you agree.)

* * *

you turn your head to the windows, see white all around. snow piling up until it seems there has never been anything else in the world. no other color. no other sound but the wind blowing tirelessly, winter without end in sight.

the suit you’re wearing is slim cut, perfectly fitted for you, so that no one would notice the jacket loose around your waist. both jean and kevin are wolfing down a meal by your side but still you can’t look at your plate without being disgusted. 

you don’t like it here. you don’t like open spaces. you definitely don’t like white. you long for the nest, for its black hallways and its sixteen-hour practices in winter break, so much that you didn’t have time to think of anything but your game, so much that it purged your mind of every other thought, everything that could hold you back.

you’re going to win this championship, and then you’re gonna keep winning and winning and winning until your name becomes a synonym for it. victory on a pedestal, always at your reach.

you recognize the security that walks to your table as one of your uncle’s man, but you keep quiet even when he comes by your back and whisper the summon at your ear. _the master demands your presence. follow me._ you almost thank the man—just the excuse you needed to leave the food as it is.

you stand, but before you can tell him to lead the way, he points to kevin with the tip of his chin, says he too. kevin looks at you, then a jean, then he stands up. the three of you make a line to the exit. you can feel jean’s eyes boring a hole at your nape, but not once you look back.

if you knew how much your life would change starting from that night, maybe you would have.

(but you don’t, so you keep your head high, your steps sure, your spine a straight line, the posture caned into your back until you’ve mastered it. and you keep walking, without knowing: a. where you are going; b. what your uncle wants of you and why kevin is coming too, and; c. that you're about to crown yourself one final, perfect time.)

* * *

in your dream, you’re drowning. 

your uncle drowned you dozens of times, and in turn you drowned jean some hundred more, so you’re quite used to the feeling of it. the burning — which always sounds funny, after, since you were surrounded by water —, the pain, the agony of it. the need to scream, and the knowledge that it will only bring death closer. 

there was also a time you drowned when you were a kid. no one’s fault but yours.. kayleigh had taken both you and kevin to the beach, and you, a six year old who had never seen the sea before, got lost into it both figuratively and literally. she just had to look at kevin for a few seconds, and when she raised her eyes again you were already under the waves.

when you woke up, kayleigh and kevin were at your side, both with teary faces that broke into smiles as you opened your eyes.

now, when you wake up, there’s no one at your side. you can’t feel the sand prickling at your back, and when you try to pat around and see exactly where you are, pain explodes down your arm, so much that the whole world spins like a merry-go-round. you feel sick. 

you try to sit up, then, but no sooner as you manage it, you angle your body to the side and vomit all over the floor. slowly, you open your eyes and see it: red.

(well, didn’t you say you missed it?)

that explains the dream, at least.

“there you are.” you hear a voice, to your left, but you can’t even think about turning your head to see—it hurts just to think about it. it hurts like that time your uncle banged your head against the table so many times that you fainted at his feet. “not dead, which is quite the miracle for an atheist as yourself.”

if not dying is the miracle, you can’t imagine what divine punishment tastes like.

 _jean?_ you want to say, but when you open your mouth, no word comes out of it. if you couldn’t find sand under your back there must be some inside your throat, from how parched and scratchy it feels. 

the light switch is turned. jean is next to the door, looking at you with the same distance and deadlike expression he sports everyday. _the nest, then,_ you think. fucking finally. and then you look down at yourself.

“oh,” you rasp, as your eyes trace every bruise. someone took your t-shirt off, and you can see— actually, you can’t see a piece of skin that’s not bruised somehow, be it purple or yellow or black, be it on your torso or your arms or your legs. for all that talk about not knowing your skin when it is not painted purple, you can’t remember the last time you looked like this. you can’t remember if there was one.

and there’s _so much red._ dried blood everywhere, as if you bathed on it and forgot to rinse with water. blood on your skin, blood on the sheets, blood on the floor. there can’t be too much of it left inside your veins.

all in all, there’s a high possibility jean is lying. you feel quite dead yourself.

you’re gonna ask kevin. kevin won’t lie to you. if you’re dead, you bet kevin will say _yeah man, you’re dead._ he’s not gonna cry about it as he did when you were children, but that’s something you can manage. you might not even feel sad about it, being dead and all. he’s not gonna lie to you, because you already taught him what happens when he does.

“kevin,” you say, not bothering to turn your eyes to his bed. you don’t need to look to know he’s there—where one is, the other is surely to follow. “what the fuck is going on?”

you hear jean clear his throat. “riko—” he begins, but you’re quick to tell him to shut up. you’re not talking to him. you’re talking to kevin. 

only kevin isn’t answering you.

“kevin.” you repeat, your voice higher not matter how much it hurts your throat to do it. he’s lucky you don’t feel like moving or you would already have your arm raised to strike. you turn to his bed. “are you deaf— oh.”

oh. two letters, and everything you can’t bring yourself to say.

“i tried to tell you,” jean says. he’s the farthest away from you he can be without bolting from the room. a wise choice. “he left as soon as— well, as soon as it happened.”

jean doesn’t need to tell you what _it_ means. you remember; of course you do. like breaking a bird’s neck with your hands, you remember the sickly sound of his bones cracking as you stepped on his hand. his left hand. his exy hand.

(tell me, what is the sound of a future ground into dust?)

“he fled.” there’s wonder, in your voice. to be honest, you didn’t think he could. the consequences were made clear to you both on your first day in the little league. you learned; kevin, it seems, did not.

jean nodded. he seemed smaller without kevin, alone under your rage. “the master already sent his men after him. they’ll bring him back soon enough.”

 _oh no,_ you want to say. _they won’t._ but when you open your mouth, the only thing that leaves you is pure, unadulterated laughter.

it bubbles inside your lungs, drowns you in it. like everything else, it hurts, all over your chest, but you just can’t stop. _he fled!_ you think, biting your hand to see if it makes you stop. jean is looking at your as if you’ve gone crazy. you think he may be right (maybe). _we talk about fleeing for half of our lives, and all it takes him is a fucking broken hand._

if you knew, you would’ve broken it sooner. if you knew, you would’ve broken yours.

you’re still laughing when jean comes closer, slowly as if about to let his hand inside the tiger’s cage. he extends you something. a lollipop. you open the wrapping paper and instantly recognize the only shade of white you’ve ever liked. you put it on your mouth.

tastes heavenly-like, morphine.

you wanna call his phone. you want to say come back and then you want to say _congrats on your breakout_ and then you want to say _don’t ever let me find you, because if i do—_

if you do, you’re going to do the worst possible imaginable thing:

you are going to bring him back.

(and render unto caesar the things that are caesar’s; and also the things that are not. 

the rest is history.)

**Author's Note:**

> and now i won't write another word for a whole year, to the happiness of the fandom.


End file.
